Responding to a spike of motorcycle mishaps among adrenaline-driven Marines returning home from war in recent years, Marine Forces Reserve has created a $1 million training facility at the Naval Air Station-Joint Reserve Base in Belle Chasse, where the leathernecks from across the United States and all military personnel stationed here can take mandatory riding classes.

“Save one life, and it pays for itself,” Jeffrey Peters, safety director for Marine Forces Reserve, said of the center he helped create. “That’s my philosophy.”

Robert Braithwaite, a retired Marine colonel who now is Marine Forces Reserve’s executive director, said motorcycle safety has long been a hot-button issue in the armed services. “The first Marine I lost as a lieutenant was a young Marine on a motorcycle,” Braithwaite said.

But officials grew alarmed in 2008, when Marines dying on motorcycles in the United States outpaced the number of Marines dying in Iraq, leading then-Commandant Gen. James Conway to order all Marines to register their bikes with their commands.

“Marines are your risk-takers,” Peters said. “They like that adrenaline. They survived a war. They come home with combat pay. They’re going to want to blow off some steam. They buy a motorcycle.”

Twenty-five Marines and 33 sailors died in motorcycle mishaps in fiscal 2008, according to the Naval Safety Center in Norfolk, Va. Since then, the number of deaths has dropped off, likely because of the training, said April Phillips, spokeswoman for the Naval Safety Center. In fiscal year 2010, which ended Sept. 30, nine Marines and 13 sailors were killed nationwide.

The reserve force has about 7,000 active-duty Marines who are based at the 183 sites nationwide and might not have access to the training at Marine bases on the east and west coasts, said Col. Bill Davis, deputy chief of staff for installations.

Peters said the largest concentration of those active-duty Marines are stationed at the reserve headquarters in New Orleans, while the 32,000 traditional reservists who report for duty once a month are a harder group to reach. The traditional reservists are required to have the training if they ride motorcycles onto military installations, Peters said.

In the New Orleans area, the Navy contracted with a private company to provide the training at the air station, but it canceled that contract after Marine Forces Reserve created the training center, said Capt. Tom Luscher, the installation’s commanding officer.

“The Navy gets to benefit greatly from the Marine Corps’ contributions of resources and expertise,” Luscher said, adding that service members aren’t issued base pass decals for their vehicles without the training. “You definitely won’t get a base sticker until you can prove that you’ve had it.”

Before the Marines set up their facility, that training was held on the old Alvin Callender Field, whose three runways at the northern end of the air station are crumbling. In 2009, Peters approached the air station with the plan to create a national training site there, in part because the Marines have no local real estate, Luscher said.

The air station provided a hangar and a building used for transient aircraft. The Marines carved out a classroom and other rooms offering high-tech simulators. Riding is done on an aircraft apron outside the hangar. Davis said simulators have been widely used by aviators for years and are now used in training among ground forces in such activities as driving tactical vehicles in combat.